Share this video

Watch Next

He was brought up on a council estate and has been known to celebrate success with a fish-finger sandwich.

So if it is one of their own who is needed to turn around English football’s fortunes, they do not come much more patriotic than ‘Big Sam’ Allardyce.

The no-nonsense player-turned-manager was effectively confirmed as the new national team boss on Thursday, after narrowly missing out on the post in 2006.

Sam Allardyce July 1972 Bolton Wanderers Football Club Player Sport Football 1970s

And that meant the £4 a week he earned at the start of his football career, sweeping the terraces at Bolton Wanderers, has now risen to £4m a year.

Sunderland boss Sam might be labelled a plodder – an old-fashioned type lacking in culture and razzmatazz. He might not speak four languages , like Roy Hodgson. He might not ooze the European chic of Sven Goran Eriksson or Fabio Capello. But the 61-year-old policeman’s son has slowly inched his way to the top.

His pal Alex Ferguson once said: “His was not an easy route to the top, but I always believed that the learning process is more worthwhile when you start from the very roots of the game.”

Read More

“My dad was a policeman for 25 years, a sergeant, and he taught me discipline. Any problems on our estate were always sorted out by Bob Allardyce. So discipline was everything.”

The job of England manager could only ever have been a dream for the young boy who grew up under the heavy smog of industrial Dudley in the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in October 1954, his future could easily have lain in the surrounding factories. Academia was never an option. They didn’t know it then, but Sam was dyslexic and struggled at school.

“The best day of my life was when I left,” he said. “Nowadays, I would have had lots of help, but then you were regarded as a bit thick.”

Stella Mae from the English Dance Theatre puts Sam Allardyce through his paces on the day ballet came to the Sky Blue Connection. 17th November 1983

Yet displaying the self-deprecation he is known for today, he did not take it to heart.

“Once I got beyond ‘the cat sat on the mat’, I was stuck,” he said. “But I was good at covering up, I just copied what my less-challenged mates were doing.”

What did hurt was his dad’s disappointment. Sam never passed an exam, and Bob did not hide his feelings.

The policeman was also a drinker. He was from an old-fashioned school of working-class men. Sam says his dad neglected his mum Mary, who worked part-time making golf bags, and often his kids – Sam, Robert and Mary, five and 15 years older than Sam.

Read More

“He was a tough disciplinarian. When he wasn’t dishing out corporal punishment, he was working shifts before going out drinking,” Sam said. “Most men were the same. Working hard, going to the club, falling into bed, then off to work again.”

The family was not well off. Sam recalls them not being able to afford a fridge or central heating.

He was a mummy’s boy. But it was Bob who took Sam to his first football match, to watch Wolverhampton Wanderers play at Molineux. That was when he decided to become a footballer.

Sam’s career as a player - a bruising centre-half - was solid not illustrious.

From Dudley Town, he was signed to Bolton Wanderers in 1969, and spent nine years there. But in the early days, the pay was nowhere near what it is today – and for a while, he earned his keep working on a production-line that built record decks.

It was in Bolton where he met his wife Lynne during a night boozing at the Cromwellian Club.

They got engaged at 18 after six months and married at 19. Sam said: “I liked the idea of stability in my life.”

Son Craig arrived a year later, and daughter Rachel after four years.

Stints with Sunderland , Millwall, Coventry and Huddersfield, Preston and West Bromwich Albion followed – with a slightly more exotic spell with the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the United States.

All the while, Sam was dabbling in other businesses, including a pub. He even work behind the bar. But various problems led to its failure, and he and Lynne struggled financially. He admitted: “We feared we’d lose our house.”

Thankfully, things didn’t get that bad. “I reckon that gave me the extra fight to make a go of management,” he said. “I couldn’t afford to fail.”

His first solo job in management came in 1991 with the Irish team, Limerick, and in 1994 it was Blackpool that presented him with his first permanent English management job.

Notts County, Bolton Wanderers, Newcastle, Blackburn Rovers, West Ham and Sunderland have all been under Sam’s control.

He was hit hard by a BBC Panorama investigation that alleged he and son Craig had taken transfer bungs. Sam denied it but he could not afford to sue.

Sam Allardyce, manager of Sunderland (Photo: 2016 Getty Images)

A health scare in 2009 put everything into perspective and that has, perhaps, helped create a man fitter and more ready to take on the England role today.

A pain in his chest was diagnosed as a blocked artery. Doctors told him a combination of lifestyle and stress were to blame. If he hadn’t had it checked, it could have resulted in a heart attack.

Sam said: “From that day forward, I never regarded losing football matches as such a catastrophe. Life and living were what mattered and there was always another game around the corner.”

If Big Sam can impart to the players that psychology, along with his graft and passion, England may just be on their way.